


The Black Witch of Belfast

by Greywalker



Category: City of Heroes
Genre: Action/Adventure, Northern Ireland, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 08:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greywalker/pseuds/Greywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bounty hunter Siobhán McScatha reflects on the turn of events in her life: from IRA assassin to prisoner rotting in an English jail to soldier fighting against the Rikti invasion and finally to Paragon City adventurer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The "Black Witch of Belfast" is what they called me, though how it was said differed between friend and foe. Sympathisers to The Cause spoke the name reverently, enemies like a curse, and both with some fear and awe. Either way was perfectly fine as far as I was concerned – I was a modern legend with the proper accompanying rhetoric, laudatory mentions, and even a few pub songs composed about me. Old wives and other folksy types claimed I am Scathach Buanand herself, mentor of the champion Cu Chulainn, stepping out of the mists of time and using her shadowy arts to drive the invaders from the Blessed Isle once and for all. But Celtic storytelling has always embellished even the simplest things with a heavy hand, where even a trip to the toilet becomes a grand epic saga. As usual, the truth of it is not nearly so fantastic.

I was born in Glenarm, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland, a small child for these parts. Throughout my childhood I'd been called "wee one", "kipper" and other such things that young, foolish children hurl at each other when they don't realize how much the pain can cost them. My father, disheartened to watch his only child treated like that, and with no mother to temper my feminine side (I had been told she'd died of cancer the year after I was born), he did the best he could, opting to ensure I could "trade fair" with anyone who dared taunt me, and those brutish boys who felt they needed to go a little farther, well, my father ensured I could donnybrook as well as they could give, having taught me the family's hereditary martial arts that we merely referred to as "The System", a way to manipulate the sorrowful energies of the soul – what Oriental martial artists might call the "yin reiki". The System had been developed on the Isle of Skye centuries ago by our ancestors, and though we couldn't explain it exactly, a colleague of my father said the art looked like a combination of French and Spanish savate, crossed over with Chinese Tai Chi Chuan. I didn't know anything about that, but I did have to admit back then that those other fighting masters had to be very wise to come up with something that came close to the majesty of the System.

By the time I'd reached my teenage years, suddenly my size wasn't a problem, and I went from a "runt" to a "petite beauty", though I suspect the changes had much to do with puberty and lads' hormones than any sudden maturity on their parts. But all was not well within my childhood idyll, for the war between the Loyalists and the Royals continued to wage in my little corner of the world. You would have thought that the Royals would have taken chances to ensure that the members of the Irish Republican Army wouldn't have to spill such mindlessly savage English blood on our lands anymore. Well...one day, they did. The Royal Air Force chose to drop a Fuel Air Explosive on a small town just inside the "border" of "Great Britain", and everyone in that town – men, women, children – went up in screaming pains of flame. The RAF bastards claimed that the town was a "den of IRA". No such thing: the village had been as staunchly against the tactics of the Republicans as they were against the Royals. But there was no one left to protect them from the English, and the blood of all Northern Ireland boiled with hatred.

Well, just about everyone. My father was a rare exception. Though he was a staunch supporter of Northern Ireland's reunification with the Republic, he claimed to have chosen a better path of peace. He said that despite his political leanings, his responsibilities as a true martial arts master and believed that answering the British occupation with force was not the way to achieve independence. Then he'd told me the truth about my mother – my mother, my dear sainted mother who I had thought all these years to be naught more than a simple schoolmarm whose life had been tragically halted by illness, had in truth been a Republican spy and had been killed in a raid on a Republican compound less than a year after I was born. At the time, my father had been so full of rage that he went and hunted down the man her surviving compatriots had said was guilty for the death of my mother. Having found the soldier safe in his home in Liverpool, he readied himself to kill his first victim. As he stood at the window, ready to break in and snap the man's neck in two, my father would have done so had it not been for the man turning slightly, revealing a baby in his arms. The man's wife soon came into the room, and watching the three from the window, my father realized that to kill the man would not only deprive a child of his father just as I had been deprived of my own mother, but that a circle of hate could continue and fester. My father, a righteous and just man, chose to walk away, with the man never knowing he was there. If he could do something as strong as that, he said, surely I could do something as equally as potent.

I suspected he thought I would see a strong man who in his greatest moment of weakness, chose to draw upon his utmost strength to do the right thing. No such luck: the child that I was saw a man who wielded great power, yet squandered it by restraining himself. All those years ago, I perceived this as the weaknesses of old age and the master had become a doddering old fool. Even as I rigorously trained under his scrutiny, I harboured resentment towards what his cowardly actions had been, and held my tongue even as he continued to train me, his lone heir, in the arts of the System, now that I was of the age to do so. I learned quickly, and as the more I learned, to more I felt no need to hold back in either sparring or my opinions. My command over the sorrowful energies became more, and the command over the darker nature of my tongue was just as sharp. During my last year at home, rarely did my father and I have a day that went by without a fight. To my surprise, though, he continued to train me, but now I saw through the lies. He trained me merely because he required someone to inherit the arts, not because he believed he could change me (though I suspected somehow he foolishly believed that, too).

Finally, when I was 16, I'd had enough. I left my home in Glenarm for Belfast and to do battle for the Republicans, perhaps even avenge my mother's death, something that my father should have done. I didn't tell my father, of course…but he knew what I had done; he knew once legends of the exploits of the "Black Witch of Belfast" and her brand of Celtic justice started springing up like poisonous mushrooms. I'd heard little of him since the day I left home, though when I was about 19, one of our scouts delivered to me a letter from the old man, saying how much I broke his heart by choosing the path of darkness. I laughed and tore up the paper, never bothering to respond. He'd broken my heart long before by letting my mother's murderer walk free, so as far as that went, all accounts were squared.

The following year, my twentieth year of life and my fourth year of war, I became such a threat to the Royals that they even had one of their heroes come to hunt me down. In turn, I sent that silly little girl packing, with serious dents in her armour and a broken arm to match. In turn, a platoon of Royal Marines was sent in to capture me with the orders to kill me if they could not make an arrest. That in turn fuelled my own belief in my prowess. The Royal Army had proven to be mighty when it came to slaughtering innocents, but when it came to deal with someone of real skill, they were as powerless as kittens and had to have "special" forces come in to arrest me. Well, I'd show these Marines that I was "special" as well, and that the only force they'd see when coming up against me was the inevitable force of defeat.

That's usually the way it goes, isn't it? Hear that you're powerful and invincible so many times that you begin to believe your own hype. It was this cocky attitude that got me caught. Even my arch-nemesis, one of the few Royals I had any respect for, said that the only reason he was finally able to arrest me was because I had been overconfident. I gambled, believing that I could not possibly lose...and I lost. Though I'd held out for a number of days and taken down a great many of their number, in the end it was that tough old colour sergeant who dealt me a debilitating blow by a stun laser. I was good, he'd told me as they tossed me into a police wagon, cuffed and all like some common bank robber, that while I'd injured a grand amount of their own, he knew my number and my skill, and the moment he saw me in person, he knew exactly how to defeat me – just as he had many other opponents before.

The trial was quick and laughable. Though hundreds called for my head, a "merciful" judge sentenced me to a life of prison, with the possibility of parole in twenty-five years. I would be as old as my father when I would see the free sky again…and only if that if the whims of the parole board were with me that day. That was the first lesson I had to learn, that I had made enemies over the years, and there are very few gentlemanly opponents out there. There would be no respect for me because I killed no woman or child. There would be no respect for me because I targeted only military and Royalist targets. To them, I was not a just and noble fighter, I was a murderer. And in that lesson I had learned not only was I not the invincible Black Witch of Belfast, but that label would come to haunt me as the years went by.

I digested that lesson rather quickly, and it was a good thing that I did, for other lessons came just as rapidly. The second was that the camaraderie I thought I had with fellow idealists was probably the same kind Joan of Arc had: as long as you're winning, you're their champion forever, but the moment things aren't going quite so well, they're the first to abandon ship like plague rats. After that, you're only important as a martyr to The Cause. It goes without saying that my cynical nature blossomed during my term in prison. Regardless, I still believed in Irish independence and was not above using terror tactics to achieve that end.

The third lesson that came to me was that I had a long time in this prison with nothing to do other than to sit here and work out, continue practicing the arts that were ultimately as valuable as tin. With my skills now curtailed due to my new surroundings, there was nothing left I could contribute to The Cause, and while I no longer trusted many of my former comrades, there were still many out there who I could trust. I could no longer offer my services as a fighter, but I might be able to assist as a battle planner and tactician. But to do that, I would have to have an education, something I left behind me when I left Glenarm.

Fortunately, the prison had a library, and for those prisoners so inclined, a way to further their educations and "rebuild" themselves towards a better self. I dived into the books with gusto, and when not sleeping, working, or furthering my physical prowess, I was spending exhaustive hours working towards finishing my schooling and applying to one of the universities that had an education program with the prison. After being vouched for by the prison chaplain (who I'll admit, I lied to just to get him to agree to further my education), I began studies in history, criminology and the law. As the years went by, I was well on my way towards a degree in law, though I could never become a solicitor or barrister due to my past. I wasn't worried about that, it was all just a cover towards my ultimate goals, regardless.

I should also mention that during all my time, my father wrote me, but I never answered the letters. I was much too filled with anger and disgust at his ways; I had no desire to read a letter of how ashamed he was of me and how much he tried to forget about his jailbird daughter. I didn't care, and let the letters stack up over time, and as the years passed, I readied for my newfound mission. Nothing would sway me from that, not the chaplains, not the kind words of the warden, not even the letters from "dear ol' da'".

That didn't change until my fifth year in prison, just after my twenty-sixth birthday, when the Ritki invasion began.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bounty hunter Siobhán McScatha reflects on the turn of events in her life: from IRA assassin to prisoner rotting in an English jail to soldier fighting against the Rikti invasion and finally to Paragon City adventurer.

Typically, it takes a monumental event to make a person see the larger picture, and for me, that cataclysmic event was the invasion of Earth by aliens. When I learned of the news over radio broadcasts, at first I thought it was just some stupid BBC show designed to scare people – hadn’t the Americans done the same thing with a show back in the 30s? It wasn’t until we were all addressed by a general from the Royal Army to apprise us of the situation that I realised that the greatest threat to Northern Ireland's sovereignty was not the English. No one in the United Kingdom or Ireland was safe from the devastation, and if this new enemy succeeded, Ireland would never be unified...mainly because there would be nothing left to unify her.

Then, as many other of my fellow prisoners also wondered: why was the Army here to address us? Surely this would be a job for the prison warden, wouldn’t it? The words that came next from that officer gave me no comfort at all: as military and law enforcement were cut down, Her Majesty’s Army fell on the only reserves it had available, namely us. The floodgates opened, and every prisoner in our compound was field-commissioned as a private and promised a full pardon…if we survived. We were also told that this was a worldwide situation and that even global powers like America and China had exhausted a large portion of their own forces in order to fight the military threat and were now relying on much the same thing as the Queen had done here.

As we were divided into groups and assigned to our new posts, I almost found it ironic that I was now a private in a foreign army; and even more, I was now a member of what I’d spent a great number of my years fighting against. But in a stroke of black humour that proved that God has a sense of irony, I found myself assigned – by request, no less – to a new team of Marines, led by none other than that gruff old colour sergeant who had come out of recent retirement just to fight the enemy. Our assignment, I discovered, was to sweep through Belfast, and then into Ireland proper in order to assist the nearly-decimated Irish military, which had almost to a man fallen in the first couple hours of the war.

After we were divided into our respective fire teams, we were loosened into the war zone that was once the city of Belfast. I then learned my final lesson, the one that I then realized that my father had tried to teach me back so long ago: no matter how powerful you think you are, there is someone who is magnitudes more so than you, and it will take something else to defeat your enemy if that’s the case. Never in my most dire nightmares could I have imagined such unmitigated devastation, for neither Catholic Irish nor Protestant English could control a dead city. The unburied corpses of Northern Irish, regardless of lineage or creed, lay decaying with none to bury them. As arriving reinforcements for a beleaguered battle line, we had no time to do so. The most we could do was to vaporize the bodies with our laser rifles set at maximum and pray that this would be enough.

None of us had much time to ponder much of anything about the city’s fate much less the mortality of life, however, as none escaped the eye of the Rikti. As they were overcome with another wave of aggressors, the Rikti were forced to fall back, especially since this new wave fought with much more ferocity. For many of us, violence was the only language we spoke, and the Rikti answered in kind as two sides who spoke the same language clashed in the sort of “debate” that one usually summed up in a word: apocalypse.

Soon, it became clear to each and every one of us that we were no longer fighting for our freedom; we were fighting for our very survival. Loyalist battled alongside Republican, English died alongside Irish – having fought, perhaps for the first time in history, with instead of against. In short order, we were able to sweep them out of Northern Ireland and as we moved into the Republic proper, the battle became even more vicious. Our squadron lost more troops in the first five minutes of moving into Irish territory than it had during the battle within the previously contested lands. Even still, we had no choice but to push on, and it became apparent that if we were going to win, the gloves were going to have to come off.

That being said, after conferring with my sergeant, he gladly agreed that I should drop my rifle and don my old fighting gloves. And with a sort of relief; I’d never liked the comfort of fighting from a distance, anyway. I stepped in up close and personal to introduce the Rikti to the System, unleashing my explosive power after years of coiled training and refining. I threw all of myself into battling the Ritki, earning awe and adoration even from those who had once feared and reviled the name of the 'Black Witch.' I was now called by my given name, though many times it would have some kind of angelic nomenclature tacked on for good measure. I was still a dark angel of death, but it was death to the enemies of our world and comfort to those too weak to defend themselves. I was once called a 'true Republican', then a 'vicious murderer', and now I was being called 'the saviour of the Isles'. From that point on, I gained true legendary status but this time, I placed no stock in it. I’d been taken once by that sort of hubris, I would not let it happen again – too many lives depended on it, and this was no time to become the puffed up, strutting peacock I’d been just before I was arrested.

It was on this battlefield that I realised my father’s vision of the true purpose of martial arts, and during those down times, the few moments of peace that we had, that I found myself realising what a bloody fool I’d been. All those years he’d tried to instil in me that there was a better way to solve problems and that violence was a last resort. As I’d suffered from years of being forgotten by my IRA 'friends' and become 'one of the squaddies' with my one time enemies, I now understood that I’d been wrong, so damned wrong about my affairs as a Republican. If I had understood that before, I would have saved myself years of pain and suffering, and maybe I would have been able to have a better relationship with my father. It also occurred to me that he’d never given up on me, that those letters he wrote, still unread back in my prison cell back in Britain, may have been ones trying to reconcile with me and give me hope and courage. As the weeks of battle turned into months, I found myself more and more regretting all I had done and to work to make amends for it. Most of all, though, I wished to have found myself yearning to make up with my father.

Tragically, I was never able to tell him. It was down in war-torn Dublin that my team encountered him and his forces, during the worst of the fighting in Ireland. I saw him across a wasteland of broken buildings, Rikti remains, and human corpses, fending off multiple Rikti enemies. He fought with a kind of viciousness that I had yet to witness from anyone I had known in the IRA, the full force of his powers unleashed like a colossal tidal wave against the shoreline. My father took down countless Rikti until he himself fell, a lone man against many. To my surprise, the Ritki considered him such a threat that they used an ion bomb – something they usually only wielded against ships and tanks – to kill him. Maybe they felt it was the only way to stop him. Maybe it truly was the only way to do so.

In that act, I finally accorded him the respect that I had for so long refused him, but too little too late. It was at that moment I awoke to the fact that I would never measure up to his greatness. He was the true hero; I was simply the arrogant pretender. I would have rushed to avenge him with whatever passes for their blood and likely died in the attempt, had not my sergeant held me back and all but dragged me to safety.

That night, I sat there, yearning for revenge and very much would have broken ranks to have it, had it not been from a memory from the past. That night, I remembered my father’s story from years ago about his chance to have killed my mother’s killer and how he chose the higher path. And finally, after years of denial, I understood his final lesson to me: always choose the route of the just above the route of the banal. And as I looked across the distance at the radioactive pit that was my father’s tomb, I realized that somehow in my awakening to the facts that I had finally become my father’s heir to the System, yet it paled in comparison to what he had achieved. I was ready for this inheritance in skill, but I had much a ways to learn in terms of valour, and I could only hope that he would look favourably on me from heaven.

Like my father, myriads died to end the Ritki threat, and even with my skills in the arts of war, I considered myself merely lucky to have survived. By the time the Ritki were forced to retreat, the numbers of the dead were beyond counting, and no one was left unscathed by the war. After the necessary mourning period and when humankind went about the business of rebuilding, the British and Irish governments were re-established, respectively, from the remnants of the collective United Kingdom's and Ireland's governing bodies. True to the promises of its predecessors, the new government granted those surviving prisoners full pardons. Cynically, I believe this was less due to their altruism than fears that returning a large portion of widely-recognised heroes back to prison would have incited riots from London to Shetland to Galway. Politicians will always be politicians until Judgement Day itself, and these new ones were hardly any better than the last batch. But as long as my sentence was abolished, I had no inkling to complain.

Furthermore, I was told that the two sides were working to finally settle the North Ireland situation peacefully. If there was anything that could be said that the Ritki accomplished, it was that it severed the cycle of violence once and for all in Belfast. Catholics went and helped to build Protestant churches. Royalists helped to restore Republican homes, and even the titles went away – all were Northern Irish, and whether that would be under a British, Irish, or even independent flag, they would all be working for a peaceful future as one.

This hardly meant that my life was now a bed of roses, however. My sergeant, now promoted as a result of the war to a major’s slot, warned me of the changes taking place within the new government. From his elevated position, he could see how the tide was turning and how people I had caused trouble for in the past were moving into high positions within the new government. In our part of the world, memories are long and extend back for generations -- where I’m from, people still speak the name “Cromwell” like a curse. And 'hero' status and media darling be damned, as far as these people were concerned, my penance would only be paid in full with a noose around my neck. The wisest thing for me to do would be to leave the country, he informed me, whether to Australia, Canada, or even the States. He then handed me several thousands of pounds -- hardly necessary since I’d inherited the whole of my father’s estate -- and a one-way ticket to New York City. From there, I would find my way to ultimately where I needed to go.

As he saw me off at Heathrow, I finally asked the old man: why had he done so much for me? Why, despite being his greatest enemy, had he requested that I be on his team and that he ensured my safety after the war? He was treating me like a kindly old uncle would treat his niece rather than the way an old adversary would treat his opponent, even if now we were on the same side. As we sat at the bar, waiting for my flight to be called, I felt I had to ask him that. There was something strange about it all, something I just could not put my finger on.

The old major set down his drink, then gave me, for probably what was one of the few times in his life, a kindly, loving smile. He told me of when he was a young man, assigned as a sniper team to a Royal Army unit so long ago, and of a job he had to do where he had to kill a den of spies. He did his duty, but it sickened him to have fired on them while they were unarmed, especially his first target: a woman. After that assignment, the Marines pulled him back from that duty and gave him some furlough time with his family in Liverpool. He recalled an assassin sent by the IRA, standing at the window and ready to kill him, but who backed away from it. He found that same assassin years later and asked him why he’d stayed his hand. The assassin had told him that he had 'found a better way'.

The major remembered that statement and took it to heart, making a lifelong friendship with the would-be assassin, one that lasted as the major’s son and wife were killed in a car accident years later. Now unmarried and childless, the major had heard about the assassin’s problem with his own child and promised to do what he could to keep tracks on that child’s situation. Despite the danger, the major gave the assassin classified reports on the child’s situation, not to pass to the enemy, but to ensure that the child was still hale and safe. Though the reports also revealed how the child had become a monster, the assassin, buoyed up by hope and the friendship of the major, had never given up the faith that the child would learn some day.

As the years went on, it was that major’s team that stepped into the fray to ensure that the child would be captured instead of killed, as was the Army’s preference. It was the major that ensured that the child was given a fair trial, and not just thrown in a dank cell and forgotten, as I’d heard happened to many of the IRA’s biggest 'names'. It was the major that gave the assassin the information of the child’s whereabouts, allowing the assassin to write to his only child, despite the fact that child had never given the assassin that same information. When the war came about, knowing the child’s prowess and keeping in mind his promise to the assassin, he had the child assigned to his team. And now that danger was afoot still, he would keep his promise.

In his old, gruff voice, he told me, "I have kept my word to your father that I would see you safe, Siobhán. I have kept my prayer promise to your mother’s memory that I would do so. But I cannot any longer, save to have you go to safety. And here is where we must part." With that, just as the airport announcer called for my flight, the old major kissed me on the forehead as a kindly old uncle would his beloved niece, and stepped out of my life.

As I boarded the flight and all throughout it, I cried tears. I cried tears for the years that I had lost. I cried for a mother that I’d never known. I cried for a father that I pushed away and was never able to forgive for crimes he had never committed. And I now cried for an 'uncle' that had seen me safe throughout the years, though I’d hated him for so long. I may have now been the master to The System, but I was also the biggest fool the world had ever seen. And as the flight neared its end, I realized that I had been wrong about what I’d thought years ago, in the prison: accounts were not settled. Indeed, they were wider open than I’d ever realised, and it would take a lifetime to repay the debt to the three.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bounty hunter Siobhán McScatha reflects on the turn of events in her life: from IRA assassin to prisoner rotting in an English jail to soldier fighting against the Rikti invasion and finally to Paragon City adventurer.

Due to bad weather in New York, we were forced to land in Paragon City, instead. The largest city in America (apparently Paragon City and New York constantly fought for that title), we would be spending the night here at the airline’s expense, then flown down to New York the next day. Having felt that merely arriving in America was enough, I chose to cancel the rest of the flight, deciding that I’d settle here instead. Here was where I would make my initial start, and regardless of wherever I ended up, it would be this place -- in the city they nicknamed the Birthplace of Tomorrow -- that I would begin my own tomorrows.

For a short moment, I thought about the possibilities of what I could do for a living. I had enough of an education to qualify for a law degree, and with my pardon, I could feasibly get a job as an attorney here in the States, after I’d brushed up on American law. Or maybe I could open up my own martial arts studio and begin teaching a limited version of the System to students here; Paragon needed a lot of rebuilding and its residents needed to be as tough as anyone who ever lived in Belfast proper. Or maybe I could attend a college here and find a new way of life.

However, a bullet came buzzing past me, ending that short dream. I realise now that the shot had been a stray one, but tell that to someone who’s spent nearly all her life around the arts and reality of war. Dropping my bag, I leapt off the railing and into the middle of a fight between thugs dressed in gray and white, and members of the Paragon City Police, all caught in a battle that was badly outnumbered for the police. Acting on my instincts, I immediately attacked the hooligans – a group I would later find out was a local mob called the Skulls. Within minutes, save for one, they were all downed by my talents, much to the awe of the police and the crowd that had drawn around the battle.

As I slammed the last one to the floor, I knocked off his mask in the progress, and he got a good look at me as well. Lo and behold, it was my old 'friend', Jimmy McTaggart, one of the finest snipers we’d ever had in my IRA team. He, meanwhile, took one look at me and spat out more from shock than anger, "So the Black Witch has become a turncoat, eh? Somehow I knew you would."

I was insulted by his words: how many times had I saved his worthless hide, and now for him to insult me like that? I would have laid a punch across his face, had it not been for a voice behind me: "Black Witch, huh? Getting so hard to keep track of you supertypes around here."

I turned to face a police officer with a thick, barely understandable accent and who struck me not as much a wallflower as his fellow police. Handing me a pair of handcuffs to use on Jimmy, the officer added, "Well, it seems you two are old friends. Care to tell me something about him while we’re down at the station, Ms. Black Witch? I’ll need you to fill out some reports."

Hours later, the officer and I sat for some coffee at a café not too far from his precinct. As I filled out the report, I explained a few things: one, I was not one of those overdressed, flighty 'superheroes' – I’d heard about those skylarks and how they’d run around London 'righting the wrongs' dressed like they were going to a costume party. That sort of life was not for me. Secondly, I’d explained that I had just arrived on the plane from London, and that I was new to the area; I had no idea that Jimmy was tied to the Skulls. That came as a surprise to them, since they revealed to me that a great many former IRA members were moving to Paragon to joining groups like the Skulls or Hellions. Finally, I told them I’d be in town for a few days and if they needed me for further questions, I’d give them a contact number as soon as I checked in to my hotel. I was halfway out the door when the officer from earlier came in, carrying my luggage – I’d forgotten it at the airport – as well as offering to drive me to the hotel and asking if I wanted to stop for coffee first. It didn’t seem like he was chatting up to me, but rather a thanks for the rescue, so I accepted.

And a manner of surprise it was. His name turned out to be Paco DeCristobal, and like me, he had been a former 'combatant' who had moved to America in search of a better life. Also like me, had also been given a pardon by his government; in his case, he’d been a hard-core Marxist insurgent in Columbia, rotting in prison until the Ritki had come. He moved to Paragon because his sister had a job here as a maid. He’d joined the police force, since the Police required the services of just about anyone who hadn’t been arrested for a capital crime; Paco had never killed anyone, so he met the criteria. He asked me what I was going to be doing in town.

"Certainly not superheroing," I replied with a laugh. "I don’t mind helping out the local constabulary, but I’m not about to dress in neon long-johns and call myself Karate Girl…or Black Witch, for that matter. And unlike you, I have taken lives, so being an officer is out for me."

"Well," Paco answered, "Maybe you’ll want to check out being an adventurer, instead."

"What’s that?"

"Well, it’s the same official position as a superhero, only you don’t have to go by a code name. While it means you don’t have a costume to hide behind, you don’t have to worry about running around in tights, either. You get the same medical benefits and such, but you don’t get access to the special privacy screening registered superheroes do. But considering what you’ve told me about yourself anyway, you don’t want to hide. You want people to know who you are so that your political enemies can’t touch you."

He took a sip of his coffee before continuing. "I know the feeling. I joined the police because I couldn’t dress like a superhero, and I can’t be an adventurer because it will put my sister’s family at risk. But as for you, you’ve got no problems on that end. And if you want, I have a contact at Freedom Corps over in Atlas Plaza who can help you get started."

Something about Paco’s words echoed in me, making me think that this was the way to go, that I came to Paragon for a reason. Plus, considering Paco and I came from similar backgrounds, he wouldn’t steer me wrong, and it would be good to have a friend I could trust after a long time without one. I took the name down of his contact, and told him I would go register the next day at Atlas Plaza as an official adventurer, not as the Black Witch of Belfast, but as myself...an even bigger force to contend with.

So, here I am in Paragon City, finally on the side of the angels, and ready to fight the good fight once again. And this time, upon the memories of my parents, and with the advice of my 'uncle' back in Liverpool, and my friends and contacts here, I’ll end the IRA’s 'contribution' to pure thuggery and crime. And if I have to take down the Skulls, Hellions or anyone else as well, so be it...the world will be a better place without them anyway, God and all the saints from Mary on down as my witnesses.


End file.
